Notes from a fan-girl

I thought it would be a good idea to address the My Chemical Romance obsession, because I know it’s noticeable. I am completely comfortable loving the band and listening to the band, but there is also this sense that I have reverted to being a 14-year old girl, and I’m not quite as thrilled about that. Let's be clear what that entails, also. I am not dreaming about marrying any of them, doodling their names into hearts, or changing my user name to MCRfan, but I am listening obsessively, wanting to talk about the music, and verging on gushing.

Although I had seen clips of someone (not a band member) talking about ”Helena” on some VH1 show, you couldn’t really hear the song from that, so all I know is some guy was talking about remembering a hot dead girl. I was not really watching music videos at the time really, as the music video channels were now showing shows about people’s memories of music videos (and other things) rather than videos themselves. My first actual introduction to the music came when I was writing the ward history for 2007, and I wanted to interview all of the people who had gotten baptized that year. Ryan’s ring was “Welcome to the Black Parade”, and even though it was just the “We’ll carry on” part, I loved it. I had to ask Maria to tell me what it was.

Now one would think that I would have gotten into them then, and I can’t really give any good reason why I didn’t. Maybe I was not ready for them yet, except I did end up being totally ready for “I’m Not Okay”, and getting really into that about a year later. This happened after the world economy collapsed, and I lost my job, and I got the flu, and one morning I woke up to hear my mother crying, and found out Zio Paolo had died, and the last thing that happened before I went to bed that night was finding out that Josh had died, and we were iced in for four non-consecutive weeks, and I got the job offer from HR Block right after I signed the non-compete clause with Liberty, but before I found out that he was not really going to have enough work to keep all of us busy, and there was more but basically, yes, during that time I can promise you that I was not okay. I listened to that song a lot, and sang it a lot, whenever I was in the house alone.

It would have made sense for me to have clicked around more and listened to more songs, but actually, I was listening to a lot of Keane too. I was drawn to them by “Somewhere Only We Know”, but the one that ended up really keeping me was “Everybody’s Changing”. Based on the title, that was not really my problem. My life was upside down, but everybody else seemed pretty stable. Still that line, “Trying to make a move just to stay in the game, I try to stay awake and remember my name,” resonated with me. Often I kind of listen to music in pairs, and “I’m Not Okay” and “Everybody’s Changing” were it.

So time went on. After about a year temp jobs came that kept me going, a real job came that has a lot of good things about it, but there was certainly some stress in the adjustment, and it came at a time when there was a side project that was driving me crazy, and then there was the refinance and Mom’s surgeries and other stressors which I have not really written about yet, but will, and there was never really time to breathe.

On the simplest level, the change came from the Valentine’s song list, when Lisa provided her alternatives. As I was listening to “Saturday Night” over and over again, it formed a new couplet with “I’m Not Okay” (in some ways they are more compatible than the original pairing), and this time I started clicking on other things. Yes I did click on other Misfits songs, and I like a lot of it. Even more though, I clicked on more My Chemical Romance songs.

The tipping point was really “Na Na Na”. Suddenly I was listening to everything—all songs, all interviews, and even related bands, like Pencey Prep (Frank Iero’s old band) and Mindless Self-Indulgence (Gerard’s wife’s band).

I think there are two points to the obsessive part. One is that this is all new. Usually when a new song gets to me, I will play it repeatedly, but it is only one song. Right now I am listening to three of their CDs plus Pencey Prep, and counting bonus tracks that’s about fifty different songs, and I have had days where I have listened to all of them, some of the tracks multiple times, plus whatever I was working on for the guitar list. I have said that I lean more towards OCD than ADD, and that is true, but I can still get a bit on the hyperactive side, and I am prone to getting over-stimulated. So there’s that going on, and that is probably a big part of how I may resemble this teenager hopped up on music.

There is a bigger picture though. Going back to the end of 2008, and all of the awful things that followed, at that time I was so stressed out that it was easy to know that I was not okay.  As things settled down, being out of crisis mode was good, but I had been in it so long that I did not even realize that I had built up a sizable fun deficit, and a satisfaction deficit.

Now I’m getting at the point where things are turning around. I am getting into a regular exercise routine again, and making sure to get outside again. Those are huge for me. We have traveled again, and we have more travel coming up. And I am writing again. When I wrote out my ten year plan in those areas after my birthday, I was not specifically thinking about how much I had been missing them—I just wanted to make sure that I had good things going on in my life, regardless of what else might or might not happen. It’s only starting to hit me now how much I had been missing it, and the writing was the final key.

It was hard to get started again. First of all it takes time, which is always in short supply, but there is also an element of habit, and no matter how many times I would try and eke out a blog post, even succeeding sometimes, I was not really there.

So, My Chemical Romance is a big part of that. First of all, musically it’s been a while since I have really taken to anything new. Even when I find a song from this century that I like (“World Spins Madly On” by the Weepies, “Never Forget You” by the Noisettes, “Hey Soul Sister” by Train), I don’t tend to like anything else by them. I’m fine listening to older stuff, but it’s nice to know that the music has not actually died.

Also, they are a huge part of my writing again. The graphic novel is because of them, and even with no expectations for it specifically, it feels good to be writing in that format again. It has been a long time. The blogging is sticking now, and they are a big part of that. Not only are they inspiring it, but they are playing most of the time when I am writing it.

I know their fan base skews a lot younger, and I don’t know whom I would attend a concert with, but it’s something, and it is exciting for me. I remember once noticing that a lot of people in the age group right above me were country fans, and I wasn’t sure if they had always been, or that they just changed, and their tastes changed (and degraded). Nope, I still want to rock. And as much as a relief as it might be to not be a teenager anymore, I don’t want to be mentally old either. I’m pretty sure I’m not.